I just got my Sony Reader for Christmas (a day early). We saw it at the Sony Style store last month when my husband was taking me to look at portable DVD players, since I'd expressed an interest in having one.

When I first picked up one of the Readers they had on display, I, too, thought it was a sticker or a fake screen. It really is quite impressive! But I agonized over the whole DRM deal for a while in the days after our shopping visit, till the husband convinced me that even if I just bought the Anne McCaffrey books I have digital form, it would be a nice gadget. I gave in, and so sometime this past week he went back to the Sony store on a lunch break and picked one up. We are just a couple of big kids and never have managed to keep all the presents till Christmas day, so yesterday afternoon, he dragged me in to the tree and gave me two boxes... the reader and the cradle. I was tickled pink!

Of course once we set it up and I bought a couple books with the $50 credit, I had to poke around online and see what other info was available, and found MobileRead. I already knew about the Baen library (yay!!) and had stumbled upon ManyBooks.net some time before discovering the Reader, but had mostly forgotten about that, so definitely appreciated finding that mentioned again. At bedtime I curled up with my Reader and got through a couple chapters of the latest Pern novel, and laughed at myself when I reached up to the top right corner to turn the page, on more than one occasion. I think that pretty much says it all.

As mentioned in my profile, I have one of the eBookmans floating around here somewhere (we've moved three times since it was purchased, so it's probably still living - or dead - in a box somewhere. But it was soooo disappointing at the time, I don't remember if I bought any content for it at all.

Hi I am Andy from Lancashire England.
Received Sony reader from my wife for Xmas after her NY visit recently.
Very disappointed re Connect Store and non European inclusion.
In theory of course should one want to circumvent the problem how would one get ebooks onto the device- I am a avid reader not a tech geek?
Any help welcome
Thanks

One thing you should do, regardless, is go ahead and use the $50 credit at the Connect Store -- just tell the software that you are in the U.S. when you're installing it. I mean, hey, free books!

If you want to keep using the Connect store, there are a few MobileReaders around here that are willing to purchase gift certificates there and take payment via paypal, etc.

Other than that, since the Reader takes RTF files (among others) you can buy/acquire books anywhere that has them in that format, or in a format that can be converted to it. Baen (if you like SciFi), Fictionwise.com, manybooks.net, project gutenberg (which I never spell correctly), etc. can keep you in texts for quite a while.

Thanks NatCH for time and trouble of your post. I will give it a go. I have redeemed $50 with sucess leaving credit card and address details blank. I have sucessfully made 1st purchase but will need to top up
regards
andyj